I need some help.

Honestly, if I were giving coverage on that coverage, I would give it a pass. Very vague and generic. Almost copy and paste. Probably written by someone's assistant who wants to feel important even though they are getting paid $400 a week to schlep coffee and make copies.

Most of those generic notes apply to every script. The reader didn't give you any specific story notes, which I found odd. Just writing style notes. Lazy. Lazy. Lazy.

This coverage was the equivalent of those overwritten, wordy music reviews that show up everywhere - written by people who love the sound of their own voice.

I wouldn't put much stock in this feedback if I were you. Anyone recommending An Unfinished Life as a script model may not have the best insight. But that's just my opinion.

Would love to help you out Sara but I'm really swamped getting my pilot into shape before it's handed over. But I agree with Zag, the coverage is unlike any I've had or seen before and not particularly helpful. The critcisms are quite broad and generic (give your character's individual voices etc) that I can imagine it would be quite hard to know where to begin working on your script. Hopefully someone here will offer to read it for you and at least then you'll be able to get a second opinion on whether these matters highlighted in the coverage are ringing true for others.

Sorry I can't offer more at this time.

i suggest she get some more feedback from various sources, paid and unpaid. then pick out anything that's mentioned or suggested by two or more reviewers and examine/work on fixing those parts first.

the style thingy - sounds like she writes her action sequences in narrative form, like a novelist or something. there's a book by William Martell, The Secrets of Action Screenwriting may be a good investment to help with the style.

Last time I looked at Bill Martell's site, Secrets of Action Screenwriting still wasn't available, even tho' he mentions it by name in his BBC video interview!

-Derek

zagoraz said:

Honestly, if I were giving coverage on that coverage, I would give it a pass. Very vague and generic. Almost copy and paste. Probably written by someone's assistant who wants to feel important even though they are getting paid $400 a week to schlep coffee and make copies.

Most of those generic notes apply to every script. The reader didn't give you any specific story notes, which I found odd. Just writing style notes. Lazy. Lazy. Lazy.

This coverage was the equivalent of those overwritten, wordy music reviews that show up everywhere - written by people who love the sound of their own voice.

I wouldn't put much stock in this feedback if I were you. Anyone recommending An Unfinished Life as a script model is effing retarded. But that's just my opinion.

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What you have to understand is that this is someone who hasn't been hired to provided detailed story notes -- something that takes many hours and generally costs hundreds of dollars or more.

This is someone who has agreed to read someone's script as a favor and provide the sort of comments that a general reading of a script is going to yield -- which are general comments.

The sorts of things that the reader describes mirror exactly the kind of problems that I have personally seem in countless scripts written by beginners.

If what the writer is looking for is someone to take her by the hand and lead them through their script page by page, they'd better crack out the check book, because they're not going to get those kind of notes for free, unless they're related to somebody in the business.

I think that the reader in fact, gave very specific advice in reference to problems that were very general and even gave the writer suggestions as to how to proceed.

It doesn't sound like the sort of thing you'd find in standard coverage because it clearly isn't. A friend of the writer gave the script to a reader and the reader read it as a favor and responded with the attached. Obviously, you'd never put stuff like this on a comments sheet in standard coverage.

But that's the point. The point of coverage is to assist the producer in deciding whether to buy a script. The point of this document was to aid the writer in perfecting her script.

While I obviously haven't read the script, on the whole, it seems like pretty good advice.

NMS

Yeah, IceRose I would suggest you get a second opinion as well. Try asking a few writers to read and critique it and then maybe go back to the studios with it once you've asked some other professionals what they think.
Shara (gambit924)

icerose said:

That's what I took it as NMS. Basically I see exactly what she's talking about in her coverage, but I have no idea how to approach it. I guess I need someone to tell me if I'm getting hot or cold with the revisions and if it works. Thankfully a couple of fellow members here have offered to take a look and hopefully it won't be much work for them and I'll be able to get out of the rut I'm currently in, on this particular piece.

I'm absolutely terrible with adding in the smiles and the extra looks and not giving the actors more room to do their thing. That in turn slows down the read and doesn't make it as urgent as it needs to be. I also struggle with individual voices, though I am improving, I still have a ways to go.

Which is where my problems lie.

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I think that what the reader was talking about in terms of defining character -- which, by the way, is a problem that I observed countless times in screenplays from beginners -- has nothing to do with stage direction -- putting in "smiles and looks" -- but rather has to do with your defining "origins and agendas" for your characters.

Where have they come from. What do they want?

And if you have a whole bunch of characters in the same scene that have come from the same place and want the same thing -- you've got a whole bunch of redundant characters in the same scene (maybe even, in the same movie).

Characters need to come from different places, not necessarily geographically, but thematically, because they have to represent different, often opposing things, within the context of the story.

You can even have three sons, raised by the same father, and yet they can come from very "different places" and be headed in very different directions and thus have very different voices.

An obvious example -- the Godfather's three sons. The Eldest, but "slow" son -- on the surface, good-natured, but frustrated. He should have been in line to take over the "family business" but he's been passed over. The middle son, groomed to be the next Godfather, but he's impulsive. He's got the guts, but not the brains. And finally Michael -- the honorable son -- he's been groomed to move up and out -- not to be a part of the family business at all. He's gone to college. He's a war hero. But the strings that attach him to the family inevitably draw him back in.

Each one different and distinct. Each one introduced in a way that allows us to recognize their defining characteristics. Michael introduced telling the story about his father, "That's my family. It's not me." Fredo introduced drunk, acting the fool. Santino introduced screwing around with a bridesmaid at his sister's wedding instead of tending to business.

There's not a point where you couldn't white out the character names and be able to tell who was who reading that script -- because the *agenda* of each character -- what they need, who they are, how they behave, is so crystal clear, that it would be inconceivable for any one of those characters to be speaking in the voice of any of the other two, or acting in the position of any of the other two.

Or look at any well-made buddy movie (take the Lethal Weapon movies as an example). Again, you'd never have any doubt as to who was talking -- what line belonged to what character, because the specific identity and agenda of each character is inevitably so clearly defined that you just couldn't mistake one for the other.

That may be your immediate goal -- to step back from the dialogue for a moment and look at need, agenda, identity and clarify those things for each character. When those things are clear, then voice will come clearly into focus.

NMS

ice, i'd love to help. you know how much ass i kick at critiquing. i'm just not familiar with the format yet. storywise, no problem.

'Characters need to come from different places, not necessarily geographically, but thematically, because they have to represent different, often opposing things, within the context of the story.'

another example is 'the untouchables.' they all have a common goal, stopping al capone's criminal empire and putting the bastard behinds bars. but their reasons for wanting to achieve that goal aren't the same. for ness it's simply doing the right thing. for maloy it's redemption. for the accountant (forget his name), it's a chance to challenge himself as a man. for stone, it's a chance to be a cop (though i think stone's personal reasons are somewhat vaguer than the others, assuming i got the others right).

if these guys graduated together from the same academy, it might have been a very different movie in terms of how their personal relationships were handled, with different dramatic focuses.

that's what's fun about writing, though, ain't it?

such things as mannerisms and colloquialisms aren't terrifically difficult to add in a lot of cases. the queen of england isn't going to say 'my daughter in law is uglier than a mud fence, boy howdy' and scratch her backside as she says it, no? of course not, she's got servants to scratch her backside. a lot of regional and period sayings are in online terminology dictionaries, for lack of a better term. mannerisms, what a person does and how they do it, are gleaned from observation. there are surely dozens of verbal mannerisms if you want to use them, anything from a propensity to using a good word followed by inane chatter to a stutter to being the kind of person who thinks they're wise but really only offers bad cliches, overused anecdotes and worn-out wivestales as advice. in other words, it's more than simply an accent. i'm not telling you anything you don't already know, eh?

what they say and how they say it. what they do and how they do it. every single character has their own motivation for doing something ~ and that motivation isn't always shared with another character with the same exact goal. one character may want to win the big game to prove to his father he's not a loser, another may want to win to show himself he doesn't choke under pressure. characters have likes and dislikes, too, and sometimes it doesn't hurt to see a character eat chocolate every chance she can (bad example, sorry).

i think the gist of what that 'coverage' says is your characters don't have enough characterization, those things they say and do that illustrates their attitude, belief, thoughts and maybe alludes to some kind of past. i think you can derive some subtlety out of how other characters react to the character in question. in 'as good as it gets,' jack nicholson steps into the hallway at the beginning of the movie, and the woman (i think she was about to walk her dog) sees him and immediately goes back inside. the subtext here is jack's character is one you wouldn't want to know. gregory peck's character in 'the gunfighter' does absolutely nothing to draw attention to himself, yet is invariably recognized as the best gunfighter alive, so when some squirt calls his name all he can do is sigh. you know exactly what he's thinking; 'god, not again. i don't want to kill this kid. why can't i just have a drink in peace?'

i have trouble with being subtle, too. i know, shocking, ain't it?! so i'm rather excited about the prospect of being expected to do more with a glance and not having the 'luxury' of having the option of following that up with prose. what i'm afraid of is taking that too far and having not *enough* dialogue and just two characters with fluttering eyes and frantically licking their lips like some frog just zapped by lightning and is suffering from serious neurological damage at the moment.

other than the general 'every scene needs conflict' kind of advice, i don't know how to make dialogue urgent, sorry. least not in a way i can describe without knowing the story anyway.

icerose said:

Right that's exactly it. I know all this and I see all this in scripts, but I'm stuck right now is the HOW. How do I do that, how do I get those in, how do I show their characters and it's bugging the crap out of me.

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My fear is that you are coming at this from the wrong direction.

Don't think in terms of "personality" -- external quirks of speech, mannerisms, etc. or even in terms of resume -- this one went to college, this one came from the bayou, because, again, all that's going to do is lead to external mannerisms.

Richard Feynman was one of the most brilliant scientists of the twentieth century -- but he grew up in Brooklyn and never lost his Brooklyn accent. He always sounded like a working class guy.

On the other hand, it's easy enough to find people with very polished ways of speaking who, after talking to them for two minutes, you realize are complete dolts.

You must think in terms of *character* -- as distinct from personality. The two are different. One is defining. Who is this person. What drives them. What determines why they are in the scene and what they want in the scene, how they go about getting in from one scene to the next -- do they act directly, cautiously, do they come right out with what they want, or play it close to the vest. The other is external. Personality can be viewed as a "symptom" of character. It may reveal the underlying character, or it may conceal the underlying character, depending on who we're dealing with.

A fundamentally evil character may have a charming personality. A fundamental decent character may have a rough, even a brutal personality.

You have to shave away all of that excess stuff to get down to basic things. What drives your character. What defines him. Simple stuff. Not elaborate histories or biographies.

He wants this, but he also needs that.

Wants love but fears being scorned by society.

He's loyal to his friends and family but he also wants to do the right thing.

He craves respect but he knows that he doesn't have what it takes to earn it.

When you can reduce a character down to that kind of basic idea -- when he becomes clear in that way, then it becomes easier to find the voice. That's because "voice" doesn't come from "personality" -- from all of that "he grew up in Georgia and then went to MIT and married and had three kids but never quite got rid of, etc., etc., etc." kind of stuff.

Voice comes from "character" -- from knowing, from beat to beat and moment to moment why your character is physically present on the page. What he wants. Where he's going. What he's doing there. When he speaks, why he is speaking. Why he has chosen to speak then, rather than remaining silent.

When I was a beginning screenwriter, and I had scenes with a number of characters in a room, I'd worry if a long time had gone by with a character not saying anything. So I'd tend to just give characters random lines like, "Yeah, that's right," for no particular reason other than to just have them say something, I guess, so that people wouldn't forget that they were there.

I haven't done that in years. If the scene requires that someone be physically present but he doesn't have anything to say, then I just have him be there and shut the hell up. Ideally, I'd just as soon have no one there. That is, have no scene at all. If there's going to be a scene, I don't want anybody in there who isn't doing some work. So unless it's necessary for somebody to be there, I try to avoid having them there.

If they're going to be there, I want them to be moving the scene forward, moving the story forward, moving their own agendas forward (which should amount to the same thing).

And even if the ultimate goal is the same, those agendas should not be the same, because that is the source of conflict -- and that is the source of unique voice.

People are defined in a story by the expression of goals and desires that are specific to them, and who act on those desires.

Characters should be introduced in terms of those goals and desires -- because they, more than anything else, really define character in the context of a story -- and each character will continue to be defined by the unfolding of the quest to achieve that goal over the course of the story.

NMS